Aerial Billboards and Messages

by Robert Franklin, Aerial Advertising Services

Campaigns have at least three communications goals that Aerial media supports –

Branding Communications – Delivering a consistent message and image for a candidate or about issue. The goal is to present this to the pool of potential voters and then give them periodic reminders

Targeted Communications – Presenting a position on a selected issue or topic or disrupting the presentation of a competing campaign. The goal is to present a short high impact message that will resonate and stay with the viewer.

Get Out the Vote – On Election Day, remind voters that they need to be at the polls.

The challenges are that budgets are always constrained, there are always more signs on a corner or pole than a person can read, static billboards quickly become part of the scenery, direct mail often goes straight to the recycle bin, and television ads are used for comfort breaks. What to do?

The solution is to add an aerial campaign to the media mix. Each of these and can be shown as many times as needed. The options are:

Aerial Billboards – These can be as large as 30x100 (3,000 square feet), are bright and colorful, and can contain graphics or text.

Aerial Letter Banners – These can be as 5 or 7 feet in height, with up to 50 characters on the message, are bright and colorful.

Aerial Billboards with Letter Trailers – The billboard portion can be as large as 20x40 (800 square feet),, are bright and colorful, and the message portion can be up to 30 characters.

Aerial Billboards and Banners are typically about 25% of the cost of radio and television, and when used over commute traffic, sports events, and concerts, and cuts across all other media.

Typical exposure rates will be in the 100-200,000 per hour range when advertising over commute traffic. Regional and national campaigns are easily constructed with simultaneous message deliveries in any combination of the top 300 SMSAs.

Production turn around time for billboards can be as short as a week, and letter banners can be turned around in a day or two.

Federal regulations are friendly to Aerial Advertising, in that there is a specific exemption from the draconian attribution and disclosure requirements that is imposed on other media.